The city of St. Paul plans to build a fence around Ronald "Arjo" Adams' condemned house at 676 Wells St., as well as the controversial "People's Park," a folk-art idyll he has constructed on an adjacent city-owned lot. Officials say the fence could go up as soon as Friday, though they doubt it will keep Adams away from the two East Side properties as well as a second adjacent city-owned lot.

Adams said he received written notice Wednesday that he has 72 hours to install the fencing or the city will do it for him. He was taken aback by the decision to fence him out before a series of previously scheduled public meetings with neighborhood and city officials in August and September.

"You wait 17 years without doing anything, and all of a sudden, it's a necessity?" said Adams, who said he began creating a tall stone wall in the alley behind his home in the 1990s after giving up drinking and breaking up with a girlfriend. "It's government using a high hand in order to press their people, meaning me."

Adams has spent years adding plants, pavers and colorful structures to the adjacent lot at 680 Wells St., which had been cleared by the city nearly a decade ago and left in a state of rubble. When the city ordered his roommate, the property owner at 676 Wells, to build a retaining wall between the two properties, Adams did that and more, creating a semi-public "People's Park" full of concrete gargoyles, the rusted lining of an old merry-go-round and walkways lined by plants, donated curios and piled stone.

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Adams' retaining wall slopes down a steep back hill toward a vacant gravel alley behind his house. The wall follows the unmarked alley, referred to by some as Wadena Street, and continues nearly a block to the edge of Aguirre Street, which runs behind the new Ward 6 restaurant and into Payne Avenue. Robert Humphrey, a spokesman with the St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspections, said the city will install fencing along the alley.

City officials say they've been trying to get property owner Beth Woolsey -- who recently took an out-of-state job -- to fix dozens of structural, electrical, plumbing, heating and zoning violations since an initial property inspection in June 2012 and a follow-up inspection in October.

"It was determined the building was not an owner-occupied property, which triggered a fire certificate of occupancy inspection, which condemned the house right there," Humphrey said. "The property should be secured by Friday. That's the deadline given to get this to happen."

Constructed in 1884, the 1 1/2-story, three-bedroom house has an estimated market value of $40,000, according to Ramsey County property records.

In a phone interview, Woolsey said she spent about $20,000 on upkeep such as new siding and windows in 1999.

"They haven't even had the (condemnation appeal) meeting about the house. How can they just put a fence up around my property?" Woolsey said. "I'm kind of shocked they're going to all this trouble now. (The People's Park has) been like that since 2000, or whenever they took the houses down to the east of us. When they tore those houses down, they left broken glass, and they didn't really clean it up."

Woolsey, who works in Kansas as a care provider for the disabled, said she and Adams have also been taking care of the vacant, city-owned lot to the west of their home since at least 2000, when another condemned house was torn down by the city.

The city plans to install a fence around that lot, at 674 Wells, and the People's Park, which city officials say is unsafe because of the loosely-piled stone wall and stairs. The wall sits on city land that was recently transferred into the title of the Parks and Recreation Department. Humphrey said the city last year asked Adams for a report confirming the wall's structural soundness.

"We have not received any engineer's report," Humphrey said. "We've given Mr. Adams some time to get us something saying this wall was safe. He hasn't pulled a single permit."

Adams has accused the city of condemning his home and targeting the People's Park in order to create a bike path from the Bruce Vento Trail to Payne Avenue along Wadena and Aguirre streets.

Before receiving a Wednesday letter from the city, Adams had previously been scheduled to meet Aug. 27 with the city's legislative hearing officer, and an appeal hearing before the city council was tentatively scheduled for Sept. 18.

In addition, residents have been invited to attend a public meeting of the Payne-Phalen District 5 Planning Council on Aug. 7, where the "People's Park" is expected to be a hot topic. Individual members of the planning council have rallied in Adams' favor, though the council itself has yet to take a position on his folk-art gathering spot.

"All of a sudden, within a few days, it becomes dangerous, after 17 years," Adams said. "This is wrong. ... This is crazy. This is hijinks. This is something you hear about in other places, like Afghanistan or Iraq."